True," said Miss Deb. "Mr. Jan," she added, a strange eagerness in her
tone, in her meek, blue eyes, "if we, I and Amilly, can only get into
the way of doing something for ourselves, by which we may be a little
independent, and look forward to be kept out of the workhouse in our old
age, we shall feel as if removed from a dreadful nightmare.
Circumstances have been preying upon us, Mr. Jan: the care is making us
begin to look old before we might have looked it."

Jan answered with a laugh. That notion of the workhouse was so good, he
said. As well set on and think that he should come to the penitentiary!
It had been no laughing matter, though, to the hearts of the two
sisters, and Miss Deb sat on, crying silently.

How many of these silent tears must be shed in the path through life! It
would appear that the lot of some is only made to shed them, and to
bear.

CHAPTER XCII.

AT LAST!

Meanwhile the spring was going on to summer--and in the strict order of
precedence that conversation of Miss Deb's with Jan ought to have been
related before the departure of John Massingbird and the Roys from
Deerham. But it does not signify. The Misses West made their
arrangements and sent out their prospectuses, and the others left: it
all happened in the spring-time. That time was giving place to summer
when the father of Lucy Tempest, now Colonel Sir Henry Tempest, landed
in England.

In some degree his arrival was sudden. He had been looked for so long,
that Lucy had almost given over looking for him. She did believe he was
on his road home, by the sea passage, but precisely when he might be
expected, she did not know.

Since the marriage of Decima, Lucy had lived on alone with Lady Verner.
Alone, and very quietly; quite uneventfully. She and Lionel met
occasionally, but nothing further had passed between them. Lionel was
silent; possibly he deemed it too soon after his wife's death to speak
of love to another, although the speaking of it would have been news to
neither. Lucy was a great deal at Lady Hautley's. Decima would have had
her there permanently; but Lady Verner negatived it.

They were sitting at breakfast one morning, Lady Verner and Lucy, when
the letter arrived. It was the only one by the post that morning.
Catherine laid it by Lady Verner's side, to whom it was addressed; but
the quick eyes of Lucy caught the superscription.

"Lady Verner! It is papa's handwriting."

Lady Verner turned her head to l